Graphic organizer

David Paul Ausubel was an American psychologist who coined the phrase "advance organizers" to refer to tools which bridge "the gap between what learners already know and what they have to learn at any given moment in their educational careers.

The advance organizer intended to help learners more easily retain verbal information but was written in a higher level of language.

However, he warned that advance organizers are not beneficial if the tools do not ask the learner to actively incorporate new information or if the preceding teaching methods and materials already are well-defined and well-structured.

[7] Others find a basis for graphic organizers on schema theory developed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.

The brain uses these patterns of thinking and behavior that are held in long-term memory to help people interpret the world around them.

Culbert, et al. (1998) posits that by using graphic organizers, prior knowledge is activated, and learners can add new information to their schema and thus improve comprehension of the material.